


The Dead Don't Need Social Skills

by Forest_of_bread



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura is a witch, Does it count as necrophilia?, Established Relationship, F/M, I can't guarantee that I will finish this, I'm Sorry, If you're dating a ghost?, It's an AU I do what I want, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith is a grouchy ghost, M/M, Shiro teaches, Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), ghost au, keith is dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-21 07:57:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12453000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Forest_of_bread/pseuds/Forest_of_bread
Summary: Lance and his family move into a haunted house.  Keith tries very hard to be a good ghost.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aeruh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeruh/gifts).



 Keith started haunting them in October, and it was pretty alarming at first.  Flickering lights, ominous messages written on the mirrors in dry-erase marker, slamming doors, the whole nine yards.  Allura tried to be patient:  after all, this was significantly less destructive behavior than most of the ghosts she had previously encountered tended towards, and she was hoping the problem would go away on its own. 

     After three nights with too little sleep, though, Allura’s patience ran out.  At exactly 4:56 in the morning on Tuesday,  she was awoken by the unmistakable sound of some of her books crashing to the floor.  She gave a furious growl and leapt out of bed.  It was time to have a stern conversation with the ghost about all the noise, and if that didn’t work, she would resort to more aggressive strategies.  

    Shiro thought,  _ finally, she’s going to get rid of whatever that is, _ and, confident in his wife’s abilities, he turned over and finally caught a couple hours of sleep before work.

    The ghost was still there when he got home that evening.

    Shiro found Allura sitting at their kitchen table with a cup of tea, and across from her he could just make out a disturbance in the air that suggested the shape of a person.  It slouched.  

    “Shiro, I’d like you to meet Keith,” Allura said brightly.  “He’s promised not to slam any more doors, so there's no need to banish him from the house.”

    Shiro had not been married to Allura for very long, but it was long enough that he didn't even think to question why she was blithely making friends with dead people.  He hung his jacket over the back of a chair and sat down.  “Nice to meet you, Keith.”

     The suggestion of human shape across the table from Shiro seemed to get a little more human-shaped.  When he spoke, his voice sounded like it was coming from much farther away than it should have been.  “Oh. Uh. Yeah, you too.  I’m...sorry about all the noise and stuff.”

     Shiro was hopelessly exhausted and annoyed about it, but the ghost sounded genuinely remorseful, and his voice and his awkward posture made him seem young.  “It’s okay,” Shiro told him.  “But if you have to do...loud...ghost stuff...can you please not do it while we’re trying to sleep?”

    The ghost seemed to nod.  “Yeah. Sure. Sorry.  My bad.”  There was a pause, and Shiro shivered. Allura’s hands tightened around her hot mug.  “It’s just,” the distant voice across the table said, “ghosts are supposed to do stuff like that, you know?  I’m trying so hard to be creepy.”  

    “Oh,”  Allura said sympathetically.  “Please don’t feel bad.  I’m certain you’re doing better than you think you are.”

    “Yeah,”  Shiro said helpfully.  “We think you’re  _ very  _ creepy.”

    “Shiro,”  Allura said accusingly. 

    “Sorry.”

    “Thanks,”  said the ghost, quietly.  The room was warmer again.

     ***

    Keith didn’t stay in Shiro and Allura’s house for very long.  The place wasn’t especially easy to haunt, given the number of wards and whatever else Allura had put there to protect her home from negative energy (or whatever).  Allura admitted that she wasn’t sure why Keith would have picked their home over any of the others nearby in the first place, except that it was close to Halloween, and sometimes spirits did weird things that time of year.     
   That didn’t stop Keith from following Shiro around whenever he left the house, though.  He appeared in the passenger seat of Shiro’s car when Shiro was commuting to and from the university.  Shiro caught glimpses of him lurking around the lecture hall during class, and then behind the bookcase in his already cramped office.  At first he was just a shadow, but after a few weeks he started to get more visible when he was in a good mood.  Shiro was vaguely amused to note that Keith looked exactly like his voice sounded: a glum teenager with a dark, unruly mullet and an edgy jacket.  Shiro tried not to wonder if Keith had gotten to attend college when he was alive.  He seemed like a smart kid.  

    On a Wednesday, Keith wandered out of Shiro’s office and threw the receptionist’s good stapler across the room, where it thumped into a chair and sprang open, scattering staples.  The receptionist and the head of the physics department saw the stapler fly across the room of its own accord, and by Friday Keith was a local myth.  There was no telling how many of the stories were true (Keith grudgingly admitted to a few of them, at least) and Shiro started keeping books--other than the textbooks he already had, anyway--in his office to keep Keith from getting bored.  

    ***

    On their way home from the university, Shiro asked, “so, why are you here? In town, I mean.  Did you used to live here? How come I never saw you before?” He glanced at the seat beside him, but Keith was only barely visible.  

    “I'm from Texas,” Keith’s voice said distantly.  Shiro wondered if this was supposed to be some sort of explanation.

    “I used to have this knife.  Since before I can remember.  It was really important to me, but I can't stay corporeal or whatever long enough to hold onto it, so I've been following it around for a while.  It's sort of easier to be here when I'm close to it?  Anyway, the last person who had it left it in that antiques shop in midtown, so now I guess I'm here until it gets moved again.”

    Shiro frowned. “Can’t you just hide it somewhere until you want to move?”

    The shadow in the passenger seat shrugged.  “I didn’t have anywhere I wanted to stay.  Also, the guy who owns the antiques shop put it in a glass display case and I haven’t figured out how to get it out.  I’d rather not break anything.”

    “Ah,”  said Shiro, and stopped at the antiques shop on the way home.   
    Keith’s knife was easy to obtain because Jim the antiques dealer believed it to be cursed and was happy to get rid of it.  It made itself at home in Shiro’s glovebox, and he tried not to think about the implications of having a haunted knife in his vehicle too much.  Everything was normal, it was just that a dead teenager had started following him around. Well, not the whole dead teenager, Shiro supposed. Just his ghost.  Spirit? Shiro had never quite understood the difference, and he had never bothered to ask Allura.  But even if it wasn't the whole dead teenager, it was the important part, because it was the only part of the boy that was still able to follow Shiro around and frighten people.  It was fine, Shiro told himself.  Keith was a very reasonable ghost.  

    And anyway, he seemed calmer now that he could get to his weird old knife whenever he wanted.  Shiro decided not to question any of it too much.


	2. Ghosts Are More Scary Than Spiders

Lance was trying very, very hard to like the new house. 

    His family had moved in about a week ago, and Lance had been convinced the place was haunted from day one.  Well, that wasn't entirely true: he had suspected it was haunted, that first day.  It certainly  _ looked  _ haunted. It was old, and the roof was angled differently than the roofs of the other houses around it, and it had an actual attic.  Lance had never lived in a house with an attic before.  The first night they spent in the house Lance had head an  _ awful _ lot of weird noises, and it was cold, and on day two Lance had discovered that their new neighbor was a witch.  Now it was only a matter of gathering enough evidence of a haunting to convince his family that they needed to pack up and leave, like, a week ago.  He had seen enough horror films to know it was only a matter of time before someone disappeared in the night.

    Lance started keeping a notebook and pen on his person as often as possible.  He recorded anything he thought was out of the ordinary: every strange noise the house made, every object that he was certain he’d left somewhere other than where he found it, every unnatural-seeming cold spell.  He tried to record some of the sounds on his phone, too, but it didn’t work very well.  He peered suspiciously over the fence between his new yard and the witch’s, trying to reconcile her relentlessly sunny disposition with the idea of black magic or whatever.  She really did seem very nice. Her white hair was weird, for someone who Lance guessed was still in her twenties.  He thought she was way too pretty and wore way too much pink to be evil.  

   Still.  

   Lance slouched upstairs to his new room.  At least, he thought, the new house meant he got his own room.  The downside was that it was small, and a loft, and therefore located directly under the definitely haunted attic.  It was cold all the time, which Lance firmly believed was because of the ghost (ghosts?).  He tried not to be charmed by how it was a little secluded from the rest of the house, and his, and it gave him an excellent place to privately freak out in the middle of the night when he heard something.

    It was still mostly unpacked, because Lance was stalling in that regard.  What sense was there in unpacking if he was going to get murdered by a vengeful spirit?  Lance had to push several boxes out of the way to reach his bed.  He sat down and flipped through his notebook.  It was two in the afternoon, so he had a few hours to kill yet before he could earnestly start looking for concrete evidence of the haunting.  

    The ceiling popped loudly, and Lance screamed.

    Downstairs, his mother yelled, “Lance, are you okay?”

    He took a deep breath. His heart was trying to beat its way out if his chest and run from danger without him.  “Yeah, I'm fine!  It's just that this house is definitely haunted and we need to leave before we die horror-movie style!”

     Mom sounded annoyed. “Lance, honey, it's an old house, of course it makes noises--”

    Lance groaned and reached for his phone.  “If you tell me it's just the house settling one more time,” he yelled back halfheartedly.  He sent a group text to Hunk and Pidge.

**I don't care what you say, this place is definitely haunted, and if the ghost kills me I'm going to haunt** **YOU.**

Pidge replied at a speed that Lance was pretty sure shouldn't be possible. 

**It's probably just the house settling, Lance.  You said it was old. You'll get used to it.**

    It was, word for word, almost exactly what Lance's parents had been telling him all week.

   Lance scowled, tapping the keyboard on his phone harder than was strictly necessary.

**You're a terrible friend.**

    Pidge replied only with a smiley.

    Gazing murderously at his phone, Lance decided that now was the time to investigate the attic itself.  If he died in the process, maybe it would at least lend his theory some credibility. 

    He leaned over the railing of his loft.  From here he had a good view of the center of the second floor, where there was, inexplicably, a small sitting area.  Lance thought that was an odd but cool thing to put on the second floor of a house.  “Hey Mom,” he called.  “What’s in the attic?”

    She looked up from the lamp she was assembling.  “Mostly spiders, why?

    “No reason,”  Lance replied, and almost reconsidered his plans.  He didn’t hate spiders, exactly, but he didn’t particularly want to crawl around in a dusty attic full of them either.  

    “No,” he told himself softly.  “Do it. For  _ science _ .”

    The trapdoor to the attic was conveniently located in his closet.  He stood under it and took a few deep breaths.  He texted Pidge and Hunk again.   
**Invest in anti-ghost protections now, while you can**

    This time, it was Hunk that replied:

**Lance, whatever you’re about to do, ask yourself: would Hunk approve?**

    Lance could practically hear Hunk’s voice in his head:  _ I just think maybe there are better ways to spend our afternoon than going into the scary haunted attic.  Didn’t you hear your mom say there were spiders?  I’m sure spiders are nice people and all but that doesn’t mean I want to go into an attic full of them.  Lance? Seriously, this doesn’t seem like a good idea. _

__ Lance pulled down the trapdoor.  A shocking amount of dust and a ladder fell out.     
    He texted Hunk back.  **Hunk would not approve.  Hunk is not here.** **  
** He turned up the brightness on his phone screen to use as a flashlight and ascended towards his probable demise.

    Mom hadn’t been kidding about the spiders.  There were an awful lot of cobwebs in the attic: old, dusty ones that got in Lance's face.  He tried not to step on any actual spiders, but they were small and dark and hard to see, so he wasn't sure how successful he was.  

    The floor of the attic creaked ominously, and it was cold.  Lance's teeth chattered, and he pretended it was just because of the sudden chill.  He shone the inadequate glow from his phone around the dusty room--no, not really a room. A space then. There was particle board and something pink that resembled cotton candy between boards on the sloping walls. Insulation, he assumed. It wasn't nearly as aesthetically creepy as Lance had hoped.  It seemed like a normal, if not chilly and kind of gross, attic.

    Lance took a few steps away from the ladder, peering around and trying not.to breathe in too much dust. He tried to see into all the dark corners and couldn't.  Was it just him, or were the shadows clinging to the edges of his little pool of light too stubbornly?  And had it gotten colder? His fingers were starting to ache.     
   Lance thought he was maybe a few steps short of being able to see into the corner at the very end of the space when an overwhelming sense of  _ wrong  _ settled in his gut.  He stopped, confused.  He hadn’t seen or heard anything.

_ Get out, _ said a small voice in Lance’s head.  He couldn’t tell if it was his own or not.  He took a step back.

_ Get out _

__ Lance took several more steps back, turned around, and fled the attic, dropping his phone down the trapdoor before him and scraping his hands on the rough wood of the floor as he scrambled down.  Once he was safely on the floor of the closet, he grabbed his phone and rushed downstairs, all the way downstairs, and out the back door.  He finally stopped when he reached the fence, realizing that whatever visceral terror had driven him there was gone.     
    Lance tilted his head back to stare at the house, at the upstairs windows and, presumably, the area where the attic was under that sharply slanted roof. He didn’t catch any brief glimpses of mysterious figures in the windows, and no storm clouds rolled abruptly into his view to cast any kind of phantasmic aura over the scene.

    Sinking shakily to the ground, Lance pondered what had happened.  In the attic, he had been so sure that some supernatural force was present, telling him to leave.  Now, though, it seemed like maybe he had just panicked.  Over an empty attic. Maybe he was imagining the whole thing.    
    There were cobwebs stuck to his shoes, and in his hair, and on his clothes.  It was gross.  Lance tried to gingerly brush some of them off with a stick as he wondered what to do next.   
    Next to him, his phone buzzed.  A text from Hunk.   
**Lance.  Are you dead?  You can’t just say stuff like that and then not answer me.** ****  
Lance sighed, wiped a hand on the grass, and tapped out a reply.   
**Not dead.**


	3. The Good Witch

    The family that finally moved into the old house next door was large and friendly.  Shiro rather liked them, but of course, Keith was inconsolable.

    “Allura,” the ghost pleaded, “can’t you do magic to make them leave somehow?”

    Allura visibly stopped herself from saying something cutting.  "Keith, I know you're upset, but you can't blame them for moving in. Nobody has lived in that house for years! It was bound to sell eventually."   
  "I'm there! I've been there for a year now!"   
  "Keith, she said  _ living _ ," Shiro pointed out.   
   Keith cast him a betrayed look and vanished.

   “ _ Shiro, _ ”  Allura accused.

   “Sorry.”  Shiro sorted distractedly through the pile of mail on their kitchen table, not actually paying attention to what any of it was.  Allura stirred her tea.

    “Do you think,”  she said after a pause, “that he will try to scare them away?”

    Shiro thought exactly that. “He probably just needs time to get used to it,” he said hopefully.  “I can kind of understand why he’s so upset.  He probably feels like he’s being evicted.”

   Allura sipped her tea.  “I’m almost done repainting the guest bedroom.”

   Shiro nodded thoughtfully.  The guest bedroom was an ongoing project that they had (he hoped) successfully kept Keith from noticing for months.  Allura was pretty sure she had figured out how to make her wards recognize Keith as a member of the household instead of a potential threat, and they were hoping Keith could be persuaded to do the ghost equivalent of moving in with them before Halloween.  Allura said she thought he would be safer that way, in any case, and Shiro desperately hoped it would improve the boy’s current mood.  “If we can get it finished before Keith decides to do something stupid maybe he’ll...I don’t know. Decide  _ not  _ to do something stupid?”

    Allura shrugged and made a gesture along the lines of,  _ who could possibly say? _ With her eyebrows and one hand. 

    Shiro sighed.  “Next time I see him I'll ask if he wants to go furniture shopping.” He had run out of mail to pretend to sort, so he started moving the little piles he had made around.  “And I guess if I don't see him I'll go without him and just try to figure out what he’d like?”

    Allura nodded.  “At the very least, I want to convince him to stay in on Halloween. I don't want him to get into trouble with any other spirits, and knowing Keith, I'm afraid that's a distinct possibility.”

    “You could try trapping him for the next few weeks,” Shiro tried, “Like you did with that other thing that one time?” 

    Allura raised an eyebrow.  “That hardly seems like a good way to…well, do anything, actually.”

    Shiro shrugged.  “Hey, just making sure we consider all options.”

    Allura chuckled.  “Of course.  You're nothing if not thorough.”

    He snorted and finally focused his attention on the mail.  

***

    Since Keith didn't seem to be coming back, and since Allura knew from experience that he would probably need at least the rest of the day to think about their argument, she finished painting the extra bedroom in their house.  It didn't take long: there wasn’t much left to do.  She simply put the last touches on it--they were immaculate, of course, because Allura had done them--and warned Shiro not to touch anything in there until it had had plenty of time to dry.    
    As she was washing the paintbrushes off in the bathtub, Allura felt a sense of dread sink into her spine.  It was a distant sort of sense, like inaudible shouting heard from far away.  The kind of feeling that was easy to ignore and forget about, which of course was what most people would have done with it. 

   Allura, being not most people, and being (on good days) a professional, reached for the feeling instead.  She honed in on it, trying not to prematurely conclude that it was because of Keith. 

    She followed it out into her yard, not bothering to put on shoes.  She stared up at the old house next door, and shivered.  Yep. Definitely Keith.  At least he had regained a significant presence on this plane of existence, but he must have been awfully upset about something, to make her feel like this.

    As Allura watched, one of the new neighbors’ kids tumbled out the back door of the house, looking like he might, possibly, have just seen a ghost.

    Was it possible to ground someone who was already dead?  How would one go about it? Allura would have to look into the question later.  She leaned on the fence, watching the kid.  It was Lance, the second eldest McClain child.  He had blue eyes and a seemingly endless supply of energy, she recalled.  He was sitting on the lawn now, facing the house, alternately contemplating it and texting.  He seemed to have calmed down significantly, and the awful feeling in Allura’s spine was fading quickly. Whatever had upset Keith was past. 

   Allura cleared her throat, and Lance shrieked.

   Stifling laughter, she called, “hello! Lance, right?”

    He sprang to his feet and turned around in one motion, somehow.  “Oh, hey!” He squeaked.  “Hi, how are you?”

     “I'm fine, thank you,” Allura replied, smiling.  “How are  _ you _ ?” it came out sounding a little more pointed than she had intended it to, but he didn't seem to notice. 

     “Oh, me?  I’m great,” Lance said frantically.  “Just, uh, out here getting some air.  Because it’s a really nice day.”

    They both glanced up at the sky.  It was an acceptable day, rather too chilly and too hazy to be called nice.    
    “I see,” Allura remarked, unable to hide the hint of a smirk from her voice, “Well, would you like to come over for a cup of tea?  I’m sure it would be possible to enjoy it outside.  Since it is such a nice day.”  It was not the most compelling invitation she had ever given someone, and Allura felt mildly disappointed with herself.     
    Lance seemed genuinely surprised.  “Oh.  Thanks, but I can’t.  I have...homework?  Maybe later.”  He smiled, and Allura wondered how she had possibly managed to find someone who was even worse at lying than Keith was.  Keith didn’t usually try to hide it when he was freaked out about something, but when he did, he was at least pretty good at it.

    “Of course,”  Allura said brightly.  “You’re always welcome.  Oh, and Lance?  If there’s anything you need, please don’t hesitate to ask me or Shiro.”  

     Lance raised his eyebrows at her.

     “He’s more friendly than he looks,”  Allura promised.

    Lance chuckled.  “Okay. Thanks.”  He turned to go back inside, presumably to do something that wasn’t the homework he clearly didn’t actually have.  

    Once his back was turned and he was out of earshot, Allura muttered, “Keith, if you can hear me, I hope you know that I am  _ very cross with you. _ ”


	4. Petty Escalation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance broods, and Keith helps with the shopping. You're all getting this chapter early because I am easily bribed.

On one hand, Lance was increasingly suspicious of the witch who lived next door. It couldn't possibly be a coincidence that there was at least one ghost and at least one witch on the same block. On the other hand, Lance wanted to kick himself for turning down the witch’s invitation. Suspicious or not, maybe he could have learned something. As it was, he still had almost nothing in the way of evidence of a haunting--at least, nothing anyone else would take seriously. Maybe an actual witch might. Even if she was secretly evil, and he wasn't sure she was. She still seemed pretty nice. Really, he had very little reason to suspect her of any wrongdoing, except that he was sure she must have a connection with the ghost (or ghosts?) That was (or were) haunting his family, and there was no way that was good, right?

Maybe she didn't have a connection with the ghost, though. Maybe Lance was just overthinking it. Maybe Allura the friendly witch was exactly the person who could help him.

Lance was half convinced he had imagined the visceral terror he had felt in the attic, but he still lurked around downstairs for a while before working up the nerve to return to his loft. He made some notes in his notebook. He thought about returning to the attic, but decided he wasn't quite ready for that, and anyway, he hadn't gained much from the last venture except for some unpleasant, dusty smudges on his clothes. At the very least, he would need a real flashlight next time. And maybe holy water. Did that work on ghosts? Unclear.

Instead of actively looking for signs of paranormal activity, Lance settled for passing the rest of the afternoon on his laptop, googling signs of paranormal activity. There was a wide variety of information available, and it was easy to spend several hours sorting through it and looking for anything that might not be nonsense, especially since he had no idea what “not nonsense” would look like relative to “totally nonsense”. The credibility of ghost hunters was not exactly well-known, he supposed. 

Lance clicked his way to a poorly designed page that offered helpful suggestions on how to get rid of angry spirits. Was the ghost in this house angry? It was hard to say, although the frequency with which small objects had been getting mysteriously knocked off of the tables and counters suggested that the spirit in question was either angry or a cat.

The page suggested burning various species of plant, some of which Lance didn’t recognize. That wouldn’t be an option, anyway--if Lance started burning plant matter in his parents’ house they would probably murder him, and then there would be two ghosts at minimum here. Would he get along with the other ghost once he was dead? Becoming a ghost in an attempt to get rid of another ghost seemed counterproductive, but maybe he could use it as a backup plan.  
Lance was scrolling through a description of “signs of a haunting” when the temperature in the room dropped, considerably, all at once. The hairs along Lance’s arms stood up and he pondered the advantages of running for his life compared to the advantages of freezing and hoping for the best. Hadn’t he read somewhere that running only encourages predators? 

A light breeze rolled across Lance’s loft. He tried to pretend not to notice. The cold intensified over Lance’s left shoulder, and he clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. In the icy, stiff silence, Lance could have sworn he heard a faint, disapproving scoff.  
Seconds later, his laptop lost the wifi signal. The cold disappeared, and Lance could breathe again as his fingers fumbled to get the computer connected again, to no avail. Finally, in desperation, he clattered downstairs to check on the router where it sat on his mom’s desk.   
It was unplugged.  
There was no reason for anyone in the house to do something like that, of course. But Lance wasn’t one to jump to conclusions. Leaning out the door of the small room that had been designated as Mom’s Office, he yelled, “Hey, did anyone unplug the router?”  
“No,” Dad yelled back. “Is that why the internet stopped working?”  
Lance withdrew into the office and sat down in his mother’s desk chair. It had wheels, which made it better for thinking in. He spun it around with his feet. Not only was there definitely a ghost, there was a ghost who had the audacity to unplug the wifi router. There was only one way to interpret this.  
It was clearly an act of war.

Lance slid to his feet and leaned out the door again. “Hey Dad,” he called, “How do you feel about burning sage in the house?”  
*** 

It was later than Shiro would have liked, but Allura had accidentally started making dinner (pancakes) before discovering that they had run out of syrup, so here he was, in the grocery store.

As he pushed an uncooperative old shopping cart down the aisles in search of the syrup, he felt a familiar icy shiver run down his spine. Was Keith really back so soon? It had only been a few hours. Maybe he hadn’t been that upset after all.  
To his left, Shiro heard a distant, otherworldly voice, so quiet he had to strain to hear it.   
"The syrup is in aisle five."

Shiro nodded. Keeping his voice down and trying to look sane, he muttered, "thanks. Why do they keep moving it, anyway? It's like they don't want me to find it. Me, specifically."  
"Yeah," The voice breathed. "So annoying. Can’t they just pick a place and leave it there? Wouldn’t that be easier for everyone?”  
“You’d think,” Shiro agreed. Uh-oh. There was a little girl in an adorably grungy little denim jacket staring at him. She looked familiar, though. He glanced at her mother, who was standing on her toes to reach something. Wasn’t that the woman who had just moved into Keith’s house? No wonder Keith was here. He had probably followed them.  
No, wait. The kid wasn’t staring at Shiro: she was staring at the space next to him. The space that Keith was currently sort-of occupying. 

What.  
She smiled right at Keith, showing off a collection of awkwardly mismatched and crooked teeth. “I like your jacket.”  
Shiro also stared at the space where Keith was. Even he couldn’t see the ghost: if he hadn’t been so used to listening for Keith, he wouldn’t have known he was there.  
“Thanks,” Keith’s voice said. “I like yours.”   
Shiro hurried away, trying to look calm and hoping Keith would follow him. Once they were hopefully out of earshot, Shiro murmured, “So, those are the people you’re trying to haunt, huh?”  
Keith scoffed. “I’m not trying to haunt them. I was there first. They’re haunting me.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works, Keith.”  
“Fine,” Keith grumbled. “And anyway, the kids are pretty nice. But I think the older boy is onto me.”  
“Lance? The tall skinny one?” Allura had mentioned talking to him earlier.  
“Yeah, that one. He’s looking for a way to get rid of me. I, uh, unplugged their wifi router earlier, so...I guess he’s mad now.”  
“You did what,” Shiro said mildly.

“Okay, well, in my defense he was looking for a way to get rid of me before then. It’s just that I think he really means it now.”

Shiro breathed a sigh of relief when he found the syrup, exactly where Keith said it would be. “Have you considered, I don’t know, not deliberately antagonizing them? They don’t know you’re just upset that they’ve invaded your space. You can be pretty scary when you want to be, you know.”

“Do you really mean that?” Keith sounded flattered.

“I’m serious, Keith. I hope you’re not just doing this because your ghost friends told you to.”

Silence.  
“Oh, jeez, did they? Keith, are you taking their advice again? We talked about this. You don’t need to be all spooky and make lights flicker and slam doors and leave scary messages on people’s mirrors just because you’re dead--”  
“It’s not just because of that,” Keith protested as Shiro made a beeline for the checkout and, beyond that, the exit. Pancakes were in his future.   
“Really, Keith, it’s okay,” Shiro offered. “Just because all your friends are doing it--”  
“Ugh, Shiro!” Keith moaned, much louder and more creepily than he should have in such a crowded place. A few nearby people cast startled glances in their direction.

Keith’s presence faded. “Sorry. I’m...just going to wait in the car.”  
“Good idea,” Shiro murmured. Pancakes, he reminded himself firmly. He might have had an angsty ghost friend and a mountain of homework to grade at home, but everything would be okay, because he also had a wife who made the best pancakes in the world. Yes, it was best if he just focused on that.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance comes up with A Plan

Lance snapped awake. His heart was racing; had he heard something? The house was quiet now, except for the wind against the windows (he'd never thought about it before, but it turned out wind sounded much louder from the third-ish story of a house than the first) and his own breathing. The clock on his phone said it was 2:45 in the morning, and that Hunk and Pidge had both been texting ghost jokes to him. He would read them all later. He strained to hear anything over the roar of the pseudo-storm outside, but it was useless. There was no sign of anything that could have woken him. 

Groaning, Lance dragged himself out of bed and down to the second floor of the house, padding down the hall to the bathroom. He flicked on the light--and stopped dead, staring in bleary alarm at the mirror.

It had most of the word "DEATH" scrawled on it, in what appeared to be Lance's sisters’ lipstick. Lance thought this might be the most stereotypical sign of a haunting he'd seen yet in this house, and was, irrationally enough, deeply pleased by the fact. Finally, some vindication. He had worked hard for this.

The lipstick was hovering in midair, and it clattered back onto the sink as Lance watched. He could have sworn that he heard a quiet, disembodied voice say, "fuck."

Automatically, Lance began, "you'd better not use language like that around the kids--" he stopped himself. What is he doing? Telling off a ghost? His lungs seized up as he considered the situation just enough to realize that he should probably be terrified, and he strained his ears for a hint of danger as he backed, shaking, out of the doorway.   
"Sorry," said the voice.  
Lance ran.

***

This just wasn’t working.  
Keith had accepted that he wasn’t very good at being a ghost. Honestly, that was fine. (It was fine.) Still, though, what was it going to take to get these people to notice him? Aside from Lance, who was actively trying to either get rid of Keith (not the result Keith had been hoping for, but at least it was something), the only other member of the McClain family who had noticed Keith so far was that little girl with the cool jacket (he hadn’t figured out what her name was yet, mostly because he had decided deliberately spying on the new residents of the house was too creepy, even for a ghost). And there was no way he was going to try to scare her. Although, he really wanted to know how she was able to see him. They’d exchanged a handful of words before, and after Keith had gotten over the initial shock of having someone be able to see him even when he wasn't trying to be visible, it had been sort of nice. He would have to ask Allura about it eventually, though.

After his failed attempt to leave an ominous message on the bathroom mirror (just the word “death” would have worked fine, right? Sure, it was vague and out of context, but it was really just the existence of any generic threatening word appearing on mirrors that was scary, right? So it didn't matter. He hoped) Keith gave up for the night and wiped the lipstick off the glass, feeling sheepish and more than a little cranky. At least this time he had successfully frightened Lance, he supposed, but it hadn't gone the way he had hoped it would, and he was embarrassed about getting caught in the act. 

One perk of being a ghost, at least, was that Keith did not have to be subject to gravitational forces if he didn't feel like it. He drifted up and through the ceiling, so he wouldn't have to pass Lance on the way to his attic. Yes, his attic, not Lance’s. It wasn't like anyone else wanted it anyway. Surely the loud, living boy in the loft below could afford to stay out of this, of all spaces. 

Keith had liked the loft, though, before they had moved in. 

***

When Lance worked up the courage to go back to the bathroom in the morning, the writing was gone, and the lipstick was back in its usual location. Lance breathed a sigh of relief, getting ready to convince himself it was a dream, but then he noticed the faint lines on the mirror where something greasy had been wiped off. He looked closer, and his heart smacked down into his stomach as he confirmed that yes, the lines spelled the word "DEATH". It wasn't a dream. Someone must have wiped the mirror clean before he got up. And that meant that, most likely, he or one of his siblings was about to get in trouble for vandalizing the mirror. 

The odds of convincing his parents that a ghost had been responsible seemed pretty slim.

He couldn't let it get in the way of his plans, though, no matter what. Lance snuck past the kitchen and his parents, shoes in hand, and slipped outside. It was time for drastic anti-ghost measures. 

Lance strolled as calmly as possible down the elderly street towards the field behind his new neighborhood. For most purposes, the field was empty, but Lance had a specific goal: he had completed his internet research on the art of ghost-banishing, and now it was time to try burning some of those plants that were supposed to do the trick. Sage was supposed to get rid of evil spirits, and Lance was pretty sure he had seen some growing in the field. 

As frightening as it was to live in an actual haunted house, Lance had to admit that he enjoyed the sense of adventure, and it was a nice day. He took a few deep breaths and felt better than he had in at least a week. 

Lance wasn’t sure how much sage he would need, so he just stuffed his pockets with the leafy, green stems he could easily pull off the bushes in the field. They didn’t really look like the pictures he had seen, but then, that was probably because it was growing wild. Hopefully it wouldn’t make a difference. It certainly smelled like something one might use to banish a ghost: it wasn't a bad smell, but it stuck to his hands. Curiously, he licked his index finger, and immediately spat on the ground. Did people really put this stuff in food? It was horribly bitter. The taste stuck stubbornly to his tongue. Well, hopefully he had enough sage to banish a ghost with already. He gathered a few more handfuls just in case and headed home to rinse his mouth out. 

If this didn't work, then...well, Lance wasn't sure. Maybe it was possible to ask the witch for help. If it came to that, Lance desperately hoped that Allura was a good witch.


	6. The Cleansing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance attempts a cleansing ritual, but it doesn't go as planned.  
> this one is a little short. Sorry about that, and about the lateness. I had exams.

     It was Saturday, and Lance was trying to sage the house.

    Keith had been nervous about it at first, and to be completely honest, it hurt a little bit.  Sure, he had been trying to convince the McClains to leave ever since they arrived, but he hadn't tried to physically evict them.  He’d been polite about it.  Also, it hadn't worked, so Lance's current activity seemed like overkill, so to speak.

    Keith wasn't going to be driven out so easily.  Common sense told him he could just leave and come back when the sage faded, but Keith was often disposed to favor stubbornness over common sense, so he planted himself as firmly as he could in the attic and waited as some obnoxious living boy tried to literally smoke him out.  He waited until the unpleasant, sour smell of burnt plant reached, just faintly, into the attic.

    Nothing happened.

    Keith's patience ran out quickly. Cautiously, he sank through the ceiling to investigate.  The smell was much stronger down here, but Keith still didn't feel metaphysically compelled to leave.  Perhaps if he had been alive he would have felt compelled to open the windows and get some fresh air, at most.  

    He found Lance in the bathroom, waving a smoldering bundle of something aggressively at the mirror that Keith had written on. He looked ridiculous.  Keith edged closer for a better look at the plant Lance was holding, and--oh, that was why it hadn't worked.  

    Keith considered leaving the boy to it.  The smell was certainly irritating, but he could tolerate it. There was no need to do anything just now, but...no.  the opportunity was just too good.

    Keith backed up to the doorway and made himself visible.

***

    Lance was already on high alert for paranormal activity.  It made sense that if the sage worked, the ghost might try to stop him by any means possible; Lance needed to be prepared for an attack.  So when he turned around and saw the ghost in the doorway, he was proud to say he only screamed a little bit.

     He had known the ghost was there, but he had never actually seen it--him--before.  He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, smirking.  He looked solid enough, but there was no mistaking him for a living boy.  His eyes were all wrong. 

    “What,” said the ghost, “are you doing?”

    Lance held his smoldering bundle of sage between them.  “I'm getting rid of you,” he said, as confidently as he could manage.  His voice squeaked, and he tried to make up for it with attitude.  “Nobody unplugs the router and gets away with it, buddy.  Now, begone!” he waved the sage between them, getting smoke and bits of ash everywhere.  It smelled...resin-y.

    The ghost glanced at the sage, then back at Lance’s face.  “Ah,” he said.  “And why exactly do you think lighting a bunch of sagebrush on fire is going to get rid of me?”

    Obviously, it wasn't working.  Lance told himself that was okay: it was only his first attempt. There were other options.

    “The internet,” he sighed, defeated.  “I read that sage was supposed to get rid of bad energy. Or whatever.”

    The ghost chuckled.  Lance wondered if punching him was an option.  “Sage. Not sagebrush,” he said, voice tight with mirth. 

    Lance looked at the plant in his hand.  “What's the difference?”

    “They're completely different! They aren't even in the same family!”

    Lance glared at the ghost, pleased to realize he was taller.  “Then why do they both have “sage” in the name, huh? Explain that!” 

    The spirit raised one ghostly eyebrow.  “I don't think what they're called has any bearing on their magical uses.  Besides, if the idea was to make me leave, it’s obviously not working.”

    Lance sighed forlornly.    
    “If it makes you feel any better, the smell is pretty annoying,” the ghost said generously.

    Lance doused the sagebrush in the sink, sulking.  His parents were both out of the house, for now--that was why he had chosen now to try a cleansing ritual--but once they came back he would have to explain the smell to them, and it hadn't even worked.  

    He turned back to the ghost, standing up straighter to maximize their height difference.  “Don't think this is over.  You got lucky this time.  I'll--” he stopped, because his second-youngest sister, Sabrina, had appeared behind the ghost, staring at Lance around his deceased elbow, jubilant.    
    “Lance! You can see Keith too?”  Sabrina grabbed the ghost’s sleeve, with significantly more success than Lance would have expected.  The ghost seemed to become more solid, like he was making an effort to be grabbable for her.

    “Only because I let him,”  the ghost scoffed, not taking his eyes off of Lance.  

    “Your name is _Keith_?” Lance exclaimed, horrified.  “What kind of ghost is named Keith?”

   He tried to stay calm.   Sabrina didn't seem even remotely afraid, so presumably the ghost hadn't done anything to harm her.  In fact, she seemed remarkably comfortable, hanging on to the sleeve of a dead boy.  She was fine. Right?

    “Lance,” Sabrina scolded, “you're being rude! I'm sorry, Keith, he's just mad because he's afraid of ghosts--”

    “I am NOT afraid of ghosts,” Lance interrupted, too loudly.   “I am just upset that there is a ghost in my house, haunting my family and leaving creepy messages on the mirror in the middle of the night and unplugging the wifi router and, apparently, messing with my sister!”

    “Keith is nice,”  Sabrina protested.   
    “Yeah,”  Keith agreed. “I’m nice.  And I’m not haunting your house.  You’re haunting mine.  I was here first!”

    “I’m not sure that’s how it works,”  Sabrina remarked.

    “What do you even need a house for?”  Lance asked. “You’re dead!”   
   The ghost called Keith disappeared.   
    “You hurt his feelings!”  Sabrina accused.  “You can’t just throw the d-word around like that. He’s sensitive about it.”

    Lance loomed over his sister, crossing his arms.  “We need to talk, kiddo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably won't update again for a few weeks: my semester ends on December 14th and until then I'm not going to have much time to write (because finals). Thank you for being so patient with my irregular updates, guys. <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically, it has been less than a year between updates, so it's fine, right?  
> (please forgive me)

    Sabrina was not very cooperative when Lance tried to tell her not to talk to strange ghosts.  She continued to insist that Keith was nice, then got upset and ran off to cry.  Veronica saw the end of that discussion and scowled half-heartedly at Lance.  “Whatever you said, say it to her when I don't need to study next time, okay?” She snapped, also half-heartedly.  

    “Sure,” Lance mumbled.  He needed a new strategy.

    He spent most of the morning trying to pick a new anti-ghost ritual to try, but given that the last one had failed, perhaps internet searches for this sort of thing weren't the most reliable.  He needed credible information, except that he was researching hauntings, so there wasn't any. 

    He wandered out into the back yard to stare up towards the attic again.  It loomed.

    Lance turned around and looked at the witch’s garden on the other side of the fence.  She had seemed friendly, if a little intimidating.  And she was definitely the closest thing to an expert he had right now.  Finally seeing a real plan to follow, Lance swept back inside to grab his shoes, and marched bravely over to his new neighbors’ front door, and knocked on it.  He tried to ignore the long list of possible things that could go wrong that was scrolling through his brain.  He smiled when the witch opened the door.  

    “Lance!” She exclaimed.  “Have you changed your mind about that cup of tea?”

    She radiated approachability.  Lance decided to just get to the point.    
   “Yeah,” he said.  “If that’s okay.  I, uh, was wondering if you could tell me about, I dunno, hauntings?”  He tried to sound casual.  Casual had never been one of Lance’s strengths.   
    “Oh dear,” said the witch.  “Please come in.”  She stood aside to admit him.  “Has Keith been giving you trouble?”   
    Lance gawped at her. “You know about Keith?” he squeaked in his least dignified voice, almost falling over as he tried to scrape his shoes off in Allura’s tastefully decorated entryway. 

     “Yes, he’s been haunting that house for a while now.  As spirits go he’s always been quite harmless, but I’m afraid he has a bit of a dramatic streak.  Please sit down, I’ll just go put the kettle on.  Do you like jasmine?”   
    Lance had no idea what jasmine was, unless she meant the Disney princess.  “Um, yeah, jasmine’s great,” he said, because he didn’t want to admit complete ignorance when he was about to tell this woman how much he didn’t know about the ghost who haunted his home.  “So...you’re an actual witch and there are actual ghosts and I’m not having an ongoing stroke or something?”  he glanced around, taking in the house.  There were a lot of bookshelves, even more houseplants, and all the furniture matched.  It was a beautiful home, but in a comfortable way that managed to be tidy without feeling oppressive.  It made him feel a little better.    
    “Yes,” Allura said from her sunny, leafy kitchen.  There were actual herbs hanging from hooks in the ceiling, and Lance thought he might even recognize a few from all his internet searches.  The witch was producing two mugs from a cabinet.  They matched, of course.  Lance was relieved that they were not actual teacups.  That would have been just too weird.  Nobody in Lance’s family ever used teacups.  “Most people can’t sense a being like Keith unless he really wants them to, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been there the whole time, or that his situation is particularly unusual.”  She set the mugs next to the stove.  “What has he been doing that has you so concerned?”   
    Lance picked at his sleeve.  “I mean, mostly he’s just creepy and annoying.  But last night I found out he’s somehow been talking to my little sister, and she trusts him, and I just--” he realized he was getting upset, and forced himself to sound calmer.  “I just want to make sure she’s safe.”   
    “Oh,” Allura said sympathetically.  “I see. I would be worried too.”  The kettle started whistling softly, and she turned back to it, turning the stove off and pouring the steaming, faintly yellow-greenish liquid through a tiny strainer into the mugs.  “He showed up just before Halloween last year and took a liking to my husband.  Shiro isn’t normally sensitive to this kind of thing, but he and Keith just have some kind of connection, I guess.”  She placed a mug in front of Lance and sat across from him, wrapping her graceful hands around her own cup.  “Keith still follows him around a lot, but he stays in your house when he wants to be alone.  I’m afraid he wasn’t very happy when your family moved in.  He’s having a difficult time adjusting.  But I’ve never known him to harm anyone, except for the one time he threw a rubik’s cube at one of Shiro’s students for making a rude remark about Shiro’s arm.”  Allura’s tone suggested that she secretly would have liked to throw a rubik’s cube at the student in question herself.    
   Lance burned his mouth on the tea and pretended he hadn’t. “I’m worried he’s angry with me.  I kind of tried to get rid of him.  What if he takes it out on her?”

   “He told me about the sagebrush.”  The corner of her mouth twitched upward, just for a millisecond.  “Don’t tell him I said so, but I think you hurt his feelings.”

    Lance sulked.  “Yeah, he was pretty happy to tell me I had the wrong plant.  Smug dead bastard.”  He remembered who he was talking to and added, “sorry.”

    Allura sipped her tea and set the mug down thoughtfully.  “If your sister isn’t afraid of him, and nobody else in your family is complaining, maybe Keith is only taking out his frustration on you.  Have you tried asking him what he wants?”   
    “He unplugged the wifi router,” Lance added, because he felt this was relevant information.  He realized it was a relief to be able to openly complain about Keith to someone.  “And why would he have a problem with me?  He started it.”   
    Allura steepled her fingers.  “Maybe he’s focusing on you because you’re about the same age as he was when he died.  I don’t think he’s had anyone else close to his age to interact with in a while.”   
    It was impossible for Lance to miss the implied  _ maybe he’s lonely and wants attention  _ in Allura’s words, and all at once, Keith started to make a little bit of sense.  He drank some tea.  It had cooled down to non-scalding temperatures, and was delicious. “So you think I should try to...get along with the ghost in my house?”   
    Allura shrugged.  “I can’t tell you how to handle your problems.  I can only tell you what worked for me and Shiro.  I won’t deny that Keith had us a bit nervous at first, but once we took the time to understand him better, we all felt much better.  He’s still a ghost, and he can’t be anything else, but he isn’t unreasonable about it.”  She examined Lance’s face and sighed.  “I’ll talk to him for you if you want.  I could ask him to leave your router alone.”

   Lance felt hope rising in his chest.  The idea of letting someone who actually knew what she was doing handle his ghost problem was intoxicating.  “You’d do that?”

    “Sure.  But I can’t play the middleman for you two forever.  Ultimately, I think you’ll have to find a way to work out your differences on your own. It would probably help if you don’t try to cleanse him again,” she added.  “And...try to remember that he’s still just a teenager.  Being dead takes away his mortal body, not his mind.”

    Lance finished his tea too quickly, trying to find something to say.  “Okay.  I’ll try.”  He felt disoriented.  This was not the advice he had expected, not even close, but somehow it felt more doable, more tangible, than some kind of cleansing spell.  “Thank you.” 

   “Of course,” Allura replied easily.  “Don’t hesitate to ask if you need anything, alright?”

    This was, without a doubt, the weirdest neighborhood Lance had ever lived in.


End file.
